You sat beside Mattheo, close enough for your shoulders to brush, while his laughter echoed softly around you. That laugh, so reckless and full of defiance, would one day fall silent. You didn’t know how you knew that. You just did.

Blaise leaned against a pillar with his arms crossed while Theodore tried to make a point about wand technique. Astoria sat cross-legged beside Pansy, her head tilted towards Draco, who hadn't spoken for almost ten minutes. Lorenzo stood off to the side, toying with his wand.

“We should make a pact,” Mattheo said suddenly. “Here. Now. We get through this. No matter what happens.”

You blinked. “Through what?”

He looked at you. “You know what.”

“We don’t even know if—” Blaise started.

“We do,” Pansy cut in. “Don’t pretend like we don’t.”

The silence that followed said everything no one wanted to say.

You opened your mouth to reply but the words never came.

Because that’s when it happened again.

Flash.

Fire everywhere. Screams tearing through stone. You stood in the ruins, breathless, watching Lorenzo alone...

Draco was pale and panicked, his wand shaking. He turned away from you. Betrayal.

Theodore stood behind thick bars, his face half in shadow. Pansy was sitting on the ground with wide, staring eyes.

A void. An empty space where Blaise should be. Where Mattheo should be. Where Astoria used to smile. Nothing. Gone.

You jerked back to the present with a sharp intake of breath. Your pulse thundered in your ears.

“Hey.” Mattheo caught your wrist. “You okay?”

You took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Just... dizzy.”

Astoria looked worried, while Theodore narrowed his eyes.

Draco was watching you like he already knew you’d seen something.

They didn’t know. They couldn’t. Not yet.

But you knew. You’d been having these visions for weeks, and each time you tried to ignore them, they came back stronger.

“What if,” you asked, “we don’t all make it?”

Blaise scoffed. “We will.”

“No,” Mattheo said, softer this time. “She’s right to ask. Because it might happen. And if it does, we need to promise each other that we won't lose ourselves, whatever happens.”

Too late, you wanted to say.

Lorenzo would end up alone and consumed by his memories. Draco would betray you all out of fear, not malice. Theodore would be imprisoned, his brilliance dimmed behind iron bars. Pansy wouldn't make it out. The rest would be lost to fire and smoke.

Unless you did something.

You didn't know how. Not yet.

But the future could be rewritten.